Jason Clarke and Haley Bennett in 'The Last Frontier' Apple TV+ Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text It's hard to give a basic description of Apple TV+'s The Last Frontier that doesn't make it sound like a helluva good time. It's Con Air, if the plane of inmates crash-landed in Alaska! The Last Frontier The Bottom Line Turns what should be thrilling into a slog. Airdate: Friday, October 10 (Apple TV+)Cast: Jason Clarke, Haley Bennett, Dominic Cooper, Simone Kessell, Tait Blum, Dallas Goldtooth, Alfre WoodardCreators: Jon Bokenkamp and Richard D'Ovidio It's Yellowjackets, with convicts instead of high-school soccer players! It's the sort of high-concept, heavily serialized procedural that NBC has been trying and failing to make since The Blacklist concluded its run - which makes sense because it comes from the creator of The Blacklist! Related Stories Movies 'Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost' Review: Ben Stiller Reflects on His Parents' Stardom, Their Marriage and His Own Career in a Touching Documentary TV Ben Stiller's Famous Parents and Comedians Star in Jerry Stiller-Anne Meara Doc Trailer In a television landscape absolutely parched for escapism, The Last Frontier sounds like a recipe for fun. The only problem is that after a pilot that hints at dozens of ways that The Last Frontier could be an adrenalized thrill ride - a vaccination against the avalanche of self-important serial killer dramas forcing your friendly neighborhood television critic to consider Prozac - The Last Frontier turns out not to be very much fun at all. It's the very opposite of fast-moving, a lumbering and padded journey that stretches two hours of story across 10 hours bogged down in over-telegraphed twists, hollow military jargon and insufferable domestic melodrama, squandering most of the entertainment value of its premise and leaving most of its overqualified cast in the lurch. I very nearly checked out on The Last Frontier after the seventh episode began with a hideously unearned emotional kick in the groin - but I'm glad I stuck with it if only for the 30-minute stretch in which the same sub-par car-flipping stunt (or CG effect) is utilized multiple times with, like everything else here, diminishing results. Look, The Last Frontier starts off fine. Created by Jon Bokenkamp and Richard D'Ovidio, the show begins with prisoners on a plane. Some of them - Johnny Knoxville, Clifton Collins Jr. (or characters played by them) - are immediately recognizable. One of them, the Cyrus the Virus of the group, is paraded to the back of the vessel under heavy guard, with a hood over his head. The plane goes up and then, just as quickly, goes down. There are explosions and a crash, and if none of the special effects are very good, it's television, so you hold effects to a lower standard. Which I ceased to be able to do by midway through, because the effects in The Last Frontier are weak by any standard, and the series, after a while, contains no action scenes that aren't dominated by those weak effects. Apparently the crash landing is in Alaska, because we quickly meet U.S. Marshal Frank Remnick (Jason Clarke), and he, out for his morning run, quickly meets a moose. ("Will mooses ever appear again in the series?" "Meese?" "Moose?" "Whatever." "No. There will be no more meese, but at least you know we're in Alaska, even though the show was filmed in Quebec, mostly, and doesn't feel like Alaska at all.") Anyway, Frank has a wife named EventualAbductee (Simone Kessell) and a teen son named EventualAbducteeToo (Tait Blum), and is on the verge of retiring, which is always a good sign. He's also harboring a secret, and part of why I stuck with the show even through the seventh episode was because the exact nature of the secret was the only mystery I was still curious about. Because the plane was a prisoner transport, it falls under U.S. Marshal jurisdiction, but because of the guy in the hood whose name isn't Cyrus the Virus, the CIA has a very specific interest in the crash and the 18 missing inmates who survived but aren't accounted for. Agency big-wig Bradford (Alfre Woodard) reluctantly summons Sidney (Haley Bennett), an agent with Daddy issues and one of those drinking problems that TV shows like to reveal by having characters show up drunk to a niece or nephew's birthday party, as if that's the best way of articulating "rock bottom." Sidney - no, it's not a good idea to name your spy with Daddy issues "Sidney" as long as Alias is still available to stream - has a connection with the guy in the hood whose name isn't Cyrus the Virus, but is "Havlock." Bradford sends her off to Alaska, instructing her on how to manipulate Frank, who everybody assumes is a rube. He's not. So the way I figure it, there are two ideal ways that the plot for The Last Frontier could